Final Score Power Index - an objective evaluation of NFL teams, based on final scores of games played.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

NFL Wrapup: Pythagorean Projection vs Reality

Last summer, I did a series of posts on Pythagorean Projection
(Part
I, Part
II, Part
III, Part
IV). As a follow-up to Part III, I present the Projected Wins
for 2009 versus Actual Wins.

Note that the format for this table is slightly different than what
I used in Part II. Here, the projection was used as a baseline, so
a positive difference means a team exceeded its projected wins; a
negative difference means a team fell short of its projected wins.

(Note that in Part I, the difference was expressed in winning
percentage; here it is expressed in games won in a 16-game season.)

Comments

The teams are sorted by the magnatude of difference; teams that
came very close to their projected wins are at the top, teams
further away come further down the table.

In 2008 (c.f. Part II), 8 teams (25%) finished at least 5 games
away from their projected win total, which (as I said) seemed
likely to be an outlier year. Here we see teams much closer: only
two finished more than 5 games away from their projected wins
total.

There's also a case to be made for more gradual coaching
changes. The Cardinals 2-game improvement (which could've been 3,
if they had had something to play for in week 17), can be
attributed to continuing improvements under Coach Whisenhunt.
While the Redskins 3-game fall-off might be attributed to Coach
Zorn losing his squad.

Those two or three extra wins that Favre (presumably) brought
to the Vikings might not seem like a big deal out of context, but
(this year) they're the difference between the #2 seed and being
the last wildcard (or maybe eliminated in favor of the Falcons or
some other team)